Solar cells must endure a lot: snow, hot summer days, rain and humidity. To provide maximum protection to the cells, the manufacturers embed them in plastic, usually in ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA). .
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Everyone wants to have nice teeth. After all, a perfect set of teeth symbolizes health and youthfulness, and can even infl uence career prospects. If having pristine teeth calls for thorough oral hygiene, then how well or badly does a given toothpaste clean? How effective is it? What must it contain in order not to damage the structure of the teeth? Such questions are primarily of interest to manufacturers of dental hygiene products, and the answers are being delivered by researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM in Halle. Through close collaboration with the Microtribology Centre μTC in Karlsruhe they have developed a new process for testing the abrasive effect of toothpastes, allowing this ‘abrasiveness’, as experts call it, to be compared and evaluated in the lab. [more]

Cold cracking in high-strength steel presents major quality assurance challenges for the automotive and machine-building industries, since cracks are difficult to predict – until now. A new process can determine, as early as the design stage, if critical conditions for such damage can be prevented. This lowers development times and costs. [more]